Letters, Stories, and Pictures From the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s) to the Great Depression (1930s)

Monday, May 21, 2012

OUR CURB MARKET, Pennsylvania; February 1924

What I am most interested in at present is our curb market as it solves the problem of how to get fresh produce to consumer—the elimination of the middleman. A committee composed of grocerymen and store-keepers originated the plan. A place is designated; every Wednesday and Saturday morning at seven, trucks, touring cars and other vehicles assemble with produce of all kinds, from large trucks loaded with peaches or apples down to a single farm woman with her butter and eggs.
We are small fruit growers—farmers in general—and have marketed vegetables, eggs, butter, milk, cottage cheese, dressed and plain poultry, fruits, flowers. I have sold several hundred quarts of cottage cheese in ice-cream containers at twenty-five cents a quart.

One of my neighbors recently had fresh hog meat. The sausage sold for twenty-five cents a pound and the crowd couldn't be penetrated, the demand was so great.

We aim to put all produce in an attractive shape, sell between wholesale and retail prices, give good honest measure and do as we would be done by.

When the rush is over, we women discuss household economy; in the summer we traded flowers, slips and so forth. Tubers of dahlias for spring sold well this year.

Everyone boosts for this market and a market house is being talked of. With this year's abundant crop of apples, the market surely has been helpful to this part of the state.